Life and death at a Big Book Workshop at the Fellowship of the Spirit conference in Queens, NY

To children, or to anybody for that matter, than to ignore them as if they didn't exist.

Well, I made my amends to those boys

and I'll tell you that when my first grandson was born, and it's been 11 years now, but when he was born,

when he was three months old, my oldest son called up and said, would you mind babysitting Carter? And I said

I would. It would be my honor, be my pleasure. And I was Carter's first babysitter and I gave him his first bottle.

My relationship with his has changed. We're about to go visit my son, my youngest son, who lives in Huntington. You see, it's no longer yours, mine and ours. It's no longer my step sons, but they're my sons. He lives out in Huntington Station and we're going to go visit him and my two grandkids. They adore us. Every one of our grandkids absolutely adores us. You know, they've never seen us. Crazy

really.

They've never seen me yelling and they've never seen us crazy. What a deal is that? And they think we're the best. You know, they call their other grandparents Grandma this and you know, grandma that by their first name. And, you know, and, and we're just grandma and grandpa. We're just grandma and grandpa. And they just, they just fill our lives.

Umm, my relationship with Tom is,

well, I can't even tell you. It's like black and white.

There was a time that I didn't know if I loved him.

I had very little respect, if any, for him. And I'm sure it went the other way. You know, how can you respect somebody if you don't even think you like them? And today I really like him. Today I enjoy him, I love him, and I have tremendous respect for him. I have tremendous respect for his sobriety. I have tremendous respect for his program

and what he does to help people. And that's a far cry from what we had before

Far Cry.

People often ask us, how did you 2 stay together? I think we were just too sick to grow apart. You know, it just we didn't have the effort, we didn't have the energy to split up. You know, that's how sick we were. It's how sick we were. And I think God has used that and here we are. And I'm happy. I'm happy

my

oh, I'll tell you this little story. I suppose

I was. I went to Catholic girls school from

up until through 7th grade.

And at this school

I went to school with the daughters of attorneys and doctors and it was a very prestigious school. And Santa Fe is a small place, but that was the the prestigious school. There was a girls school and a boy school and the governors, if they had daughters, their daughters went to school there also. Well, my father

drank. He drank. My earliest memory of my father was when I was about 5 years old. My mother was ironing one night and next thing I knew my my mother was against the wall. My father was holding her and he had an iron within about four inches from her face.

Next thing I know we're leaving the house,

going to stay at my aunt's house,

and that's my first memory.

So I'm a Catholic girls school. My father's a construction worker. He'd been that up until I was about six years old and and girls school. And then he switched. He became an employee of the federal government, the General Services Department, and he was a security guard in a maintenance man at the US Post office in our little town. I thought I had the wrong dad.

I thought I was supposed to have a father that was an attorney or a doctor,

something important. Never once did it occur to me that mom and dad were working as hard as they could to give me the best education that they could. They worked hard, they were hard working people and they loved me so much that they wanted me to have the best education I could. I was such a little shit. I was just a brat, you know. I was selfish and self-centered from the get go, and I had the wrong Papa.

Well, I found myself pregnant my senior year of high school

and got married and this was 1971. And I guess that's all I knew to do. And so my father and I are standing at the rear of the church just before the marriage ceremonies to take place. And he said, what is I when I get when we get to the altar? He said I want to hug you and kiss you before I turn you over to your husband to be said OK Dad.

I said OK, Dad, without having any intention of letting that happen.

Now I can't tell you why. Why, you know,

was it because I thought I should have a different father and I was ashamed of what my dad did? Or was it because I remembered being little

and seeing my dad drunk with his face, you know, in his food and going to the store and people saying to me saw your dad out in the front porch. And in Spanish, they'd say to me Estava and Lauena, which means he was feeling no pain. He was loaded, you know, more or less. And I'd say I'd, I'd laugh and I'd say, yeah, I know, I know. And they'd laugh and, you know, I'd pretend it didn't hurt, but it hurt.

It was very painful.

I didn't want anybody laughing at my dad. I didn't want anybody laughing at my family.

It wasn't funny, but I laughed that you couldn't see the pain so you didn't know I'd hurt.

So we get to the altar and I immediately turn away from my father. Thanks honey

and

umm, we go on with the service after the reception was over and we're going home. You know, at some point my dad turns to me and he said you must be very ashamed of me. I said why do you say that, Dad?

And he said, well, you didn't let me hug you and you didn't let me kiss you. I said, Oh no, dad. I said I forgot. I forgot

Alcoholics don't hold the market.

Unselfishness and self centeredness. Myself as a family member. I'm right there with you,

full of lies, full of deception.

So the day came when I realized I had to make amends to my father,

talked to my sponsor and she said you're not going to go and tell your father that you were ashamed of him, she says. Can you imagine how that would make him feel?

Cripple him. He'd be devastated. So what do I do? And she said, you know what you stole from your father? I said, well, and I thought about it, you know, and, and, and to tell you the truth, it's really over time, over time that it's hit me more and more as to what I really did to my father and what I stole for him from him. And I realized that what I'd stolen from my father

was my love. Didn't give him my love. I didn't give him my time,

I didn't give him my attention,

and most of all, I didn't give him my respect.

Bless you,

He deserved all that. He deserved all that

as my father, absolutely,

but also as a child of God,

just plain a child of God.

So what I started to do

was I would go into my parents house after work or on the weekends and I'd go and find my father and I'd sit down with him

and I'd ask him How you doing Dad?

What'd you do today?

And I didn't rush it. Wow, That's not entirely true. At first I did, you know, at first I just, you know, went through the motions. But after some time, I found myself sitting there with him more and more and truly given him my time, my attention, my respect. And I found myself really being interested in what he had to say and what he did.

Little by little, I found myself giving him hugs.

Little by little I found myself kissing him on the cheek.

Little by little I thought of myself, teasing him, rubbing that little bolts body.

My relationship with my dad began to change.

He started telling me how much he loved me

before we'd go someplace. He'd come over to the house and would say I just came to say bye and I love you. He'd say bye and he loved Tom. Oh God, he loved Tom

and.

Couple of three years ago he was in the hospital and I was with him and my sponsor had come to visit.

She just gotten in on the day he had surgery.

We'd planned a party that night and all, everybody, I mean, all my sponsees, Tom Sponsee's people we knew in the program were coming to the house and I was going to leave the hospital. And because Dad was doing OK and I came to realize that Dad wasn't in a position where he could self administer his pain medication.

And I stopped for a minute

and I did what I was taught to do,

which is to pause and ask God for right thought and action and the power to carry it out.

And it came to me. You can't go home. If you go home and you leave your father here,

you won't sleep to night.

And so I stayed and it was the right thing to do.

At the same time my dad ended up a week later

having some an infection that they had to Lance where he had the Ivs and he went into shock and he nearly died that day. And I the fear I saw on my dad as his fever shot up to 107 within, you know, seconds, literally, he was scared to death. And he said afterwards,

after we, you know, got him down and got him taken care of, he said, I think I'd have died if it hadn't been for you.

And I minimized it. And I said, oh, now Dad, you know, it's, you know, it's no big deal because I couldn't stand the pain

of what might have happened, of how it might have felt if he'd have gone. Long story short, you know, a couple of years later, last summer, he was last spring, he was starting in five. He was starting to lose weight. And I saw it. We both saw it, but I really didn't want to,

you know, I can still go into denial, still go into denial. And I didn't want to think there was anything wrong with my dad. Healthy man, 79 years old and he's still working with Tom doing construction.

Tom, he'd be up on the roofs or he'd be up on scaffolds and ladders. And I'd say, Tom, you can't have him do that. What are you doing? You know, if he falls, he's going to get hurt. And he says I'm not telling him that. He says you tell him I'm not telling him.

And I would say, Dad, you better not do that. You'd be careful. And he just kind of laughed. And he said, OK. And then he'd be back up, you know? And I loved it, loved working. He'd be up at 5:00 in the morning in the summer,

you know, working out in the yard, and every Saturday he'd be over at our house taking out the trash.

You see,

Dad did naturally what I had to come to you to learn.

Dad was just a helpful man.

Dad just wanted to be of service to his family in any way he could. Every morning when I was a kid, every morning, every morning, every morning, he would make breakfast. And I'm not talking cereal. I'm talking Full breakfast, Full breakfast. And when I was talking with my dad about this a couple of months ago, he didn't even remember. I mean, that's just the kind of man he was. He was not the kind of man to keep score.

He truly was not.

And my dad loved to drink,

drank, and his drinking affected me,

affected me, and I watched his drinking affect my mother. So anyway, he kept losing weight, losing weight, losing weight, and we kept going to the doctor. Last summer, I'd go with him and finally in October, we found out what was wrong with him after several misdiagnosis and he had prostate cancer that had metastasized in his lungs and in his bones and he was breaking bones. We couldn't figure out why. Finally we found out why. And you know, we did the deal. We

the treatment, I asked the doctor how long does he have? And she says, well, if the treatment doesn't work, he's got two months. If it works, you might have, you know, a couple of years, maybe five, that's stretching it, but might be five. He was doing good. February, March, he was doing good. He was doing great. And I thought, man, you know, this is going to be OK. Not that he'd be healed, but he'd be OK. And and he was OK.

And then he started getting sick. And then May he broke an arm because his arm's, his bones were so brittle from the cancer. He broke an arm

just getting up, just snapped in half and umm. His PSA scores began

going up doubling and his blood counts were lowered.

And umm,

beginning of end of June, he asked me a question. He said when's your next trip? When do you have your next trip scheduled? And I said, well, dad, we have something coming up and beginning of August in New York. And I said we have something in July and up in Colorado. So, but that can all be changed. So that can all be changed. I said don't give it a second thought because I could see that he was needing more and more care.

About a week after that, he fell.

He fell twice the same night, and then two days later he fell again. And we realized that we couldn't live, leave him alone. Now, my mom's still alive, but she's 80, you know, she's about to be 81. And she couldn't do anything to help him, and she didn't want to. My mom didn't want him at home. She wanted him away at a nursing home because it was too painful for her to watch him. She just couldn't stand the pain. My brother, who was five years younger than me, passed away 19 years ago.

She'd seen

two of her sisters die,

had a brother that she lost

lot of lot of losses in her life and she just couldn't deal with it, couldn't deal with it.

And I couldn't stand the idea of putting my father in a nursing home. I just couldn't bear it.

So I and my youngest daughter primarily, you know, would spend the night there. And

finally my Tom and my youngest daughter and her husband took a trip. And I realized, you know what? I can't do this. I need some help. So there's a couple of guys in the program who did elderly care and I asked them if they would come. So I had four nights a week. I had them come and help.

It was quick. After that I started saying a prayer and the prayer I started saying was God.

This is really tough on my dad.

I ask you to please

take him home with you and take him quickly

because this is just killing him by slow, slow measures.

It was quick. A week after that,

if that long, my dad couldn't get out of bed anymore

and he wanted to get up, you know, he wanted to get up and go to the bathroom. The idea of staying in bed with a diaper on, just it's not my dad.

And so we went from me helping him for a month, shuffling from his wheelchair into bed to the bathroom, back again,

to changing his diaper.

Now here's the miracle of this. Here's what I really want to tell you about.

I think I got the 12 step. My dad not into Alcoholics Anonymous, not into Al Anon.

A 12 step hymn to a power

that he could believe it.

And who would receive him with open arms.

And here's what I mean.

Little by little,

I started to tell him the stories

that I told and have told throughout the years about him. When I tell my stories, when I come and spend my time with you.

I told him about how I told people how he used to make breakfast and about how he'd come and take the trash.

And I said to him, you know what, Dad? I tell him that you just naturally did this 'cause that's who you are.

And I had to come to Al Anon to learn how to do that.

And then I told him the story.

And this is over a period of a few days.

Told him the story of how

when my brother was in the hospital 19 years ago

and it was the third day, he'd been in a coma and mom and I walked into his hospital room and the doctors are working to revive him for about the 20th time.

I got my mom by the hand and I steered her out of his room

and we walked in. We walked out in the halls and began to walk around the unit of the care unit there, the cardiac unit. And I said to mom, Mom, how you doing?

And she said

not good.

What's wrong, Mom?

Well, I'm afraid of where your brother's going to end up.

She had the kind of God I had when I got to you, a God that was going to send her son to hell. God was going to send me to hell for the things I'd done, punishing God. So we walked a little ways and I said, you know what, Mom? I said I think God loves us so much

and he knows what we're going to do because he knows everything way before we do it, before we do anything wrong.

And because what? Because he loves us so much before we ever do anything wrong, He forgives us long before we do it, long before we do it. I said, I don't think God even, you know, holds anything against us. And we walked on a little ways and my mom all of a sudden stopped and she turned to me and she said, do you really believe this?

Now, as I'm telling my father this story,

I could feel the quiet

and I could feel him listening.

And by this time, my dad's not responsive,

but he's listening. And you can just feel it in the room.

You could just feel it like a presence.

And he was waiting for the answer.

He was waiting for the answer. And I said, you know what, Dad? I had to really think about this because, you know, I wasn't sure if I really believed it or if I was just sane.

Then all of a sudden I realized I really did. Up until that second, they had just been words, but all of a sudden it came to me. Yeah, I believe it.

And as I said that,

you could visibly see his face relax

and you could feel

that he was beginning to believe what I was saying.

I said. And then dad, we kept walking. And mammoth, as we got to Carlos's room, my brother's room, she said, OK, if God wants him that bad, God can have him,

I said. And that's when the doctor came out and said I'm sorry,

my mother, who was very, very angry, not only at my father because he was ill and because he was dying, but at me because I wouldn't put him in the rest home.

What had nothing to do with him

and wondered very little to do with me doing this whole time

I had gotten in morning meditation.

There's a chaplet that I like to do and it's called the Chaplet to Saint Michael

and umm, I began to do a novena,

and this was before

he couldn't move out of bed. And in the novena, I was asking God to, you know, speed his

receiving my father.

And it was Tuesday morning and I asked my mom on Tuesday morning

if she would like to come in with my daughter and me and say this chaplet.

And it was a lot of us there that morning saying the chaplet. Tom was there, my cousin, a couple of others and my aunt walked in halfway through and we all said the chaplet. And this was the first time my mom came into my dad's room and actually just sat there. It wasn't easy for her, but because we're going to pray she was OK with it. And I, my sponsor who I talked to, said, I want you to do something else. She says, I want you to say the the rosary for Divine Mercy,

and that's a rosary that gets said for people who are dying.

And what it's about, and this is paraphrasing, is really to give someone peace and to say that they're forgiven no matter what.

So I asked my mom if she'd like to say that, and she said, yeah, but not now. She had to go eat lunch with her brothers and sisters. That's what they do every Wednesday. So she came back Wednesday night, and she said, well, if we're going to do that rosary that you wanted to do, we better do it now. And so we did. And then the next morning,

actually that was Wednesday night. Anyway, we said it a couple of times, but every time we said this, there was a greater peace. And by the end of that rosary, my mom came over to my dad's bedside and put her hand on his arm, which she hadn't done.

And Mom and I had had a little talk.

You see, what I realized was that if I I wasn't going to be at peace with myself when my father died, if I didn't sit and have a chat with my mother and I had to have a chat with my mother that went like this. Mom, I know you're very angry with Dad, but when he's gone, I'm really afraid that you're not going to be at peace and be OK

if you don't say something along the lines of you love him or you sad for him or say something. And she says, well, all I think I can say to him is I'm really sad that you're suffering. And I said, well, that's probably a very good thing to say.

And this is making a very Long story short.

Anyway, Mom's dad. Mom stood by dad's bedside and put her arm on him, her hand on him, and said, I'm really sorry. I'm so sad that you're having a hard time and suffering.

So that night, this is the night he passed away.

My youngest daughter was supposed to stay with him that night because we were taking turns and I just, I couldn't go home. I'd been there the night before even though we had a health care worker staying with him because I didn't want to be gone when he when he left.

And so I set my alarm for every half hour because we're giving him a lot of medication

and my daughter's 27. I don't want her to have to do this.

I want to keep my kids from having the pain, you know? I still do.

The thing is, is that you can't be in life, you can't be fully immersed in life. You don't have the pain as well as well as the joy.

Anyway,

I thought my alarm finally goes off about 1:30 and I really haven't slept much and sit by his bed. And I realized that we're coming to the end.

And my mom comes in shortly thereafter and she, you know, asks how he's doing. And I said, Mom, I think he's, you know, he's slowly going out.

Anyway, he finally did. And it was the most peaceful death, the most peaceful death. Peaceful.

Everybody says what a nice gift you gave your dad. Yeah, I think I did. I really mean it when I say I think I 12 stepped into a power that could

that he believed could receive him with open, loving arms. I mean, what I've just shared with you is just so minimal in the conversations we had. But I got a gift. I got a gift.

I got to care for my father the way he cared for me,

and I will tell you that because I cared for him in this manner. I think the pain that I felt when he passed

is greater than it would have been had I not done this.

But what I got out of it was I got to give my dad a little piece of who I really am, not just his daughter,

but who I am, the person that you guys get to see when I come and share.

And I like to think that my mother's in a better place

for being able to tell my dad

that she was sorry that he was hurting.

I'm not the same person that I was when I first walked in here. And I'm not the same person I was when I started with started this process with my father. And

I don't know what that means in my life. And I don't know what that means for who I am or who I'll be, who I'll find myself to be.

But I got a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to be a heck of a lot better for it.

That my family is going to be a heck of a lot better for it.

That when I come and share with you, maybe you'll be a little bit better for it.

I have never been able to share

who I am and tell my story

without just opening my heart

and let you see who I am.

And it's such a far cry from who I was when I first came to you because I had myself so locked up tight. So locked up tight out of my fears.

One last little story, one last little amends I want to give you

because there's so many of you who have been through this other little thing.

The book says that we will share our darkest past and it might become our greatest asset.

And before I'd come into this program, I'd had three abortions.

Quick transition, huh?

And

just lost my lens swimming in my eye. Oh well. And

I had no respect for life by the time I got to you guys. No respect for my life, no respect for his life, no respect for my kids life, no respect for life, period.

I knew at one point I was never OK with the abortions. I had never OK with them.

That doesn't mean that I think there's a right or wrong for anyone else. I just knew it was against my values. It was against my values.

I'd gone to confession, talked to priests. It's never at peace with him. I knew I was going to have to make amends for it. And finally the day came when I had to do it, and I asked Tom if he joined me in him, and he said yeah, because two of those were with him

and umm.

So we sat down one Sunday morning in our house, in our sunroom,

and

I had gotten these seven day candles

and I picked one for each one of the little spirits which I had aborted.

And as we sat in prayer and meditation,

we finished that. And then I lit the candles. I lit each candle, and I called each little spirit by name because I knew what their names were and I knew what their sex was from the very beginning. There was never a doubt in my mind. Never doubt in my mind

and umm,

I just talked to him.

I just talked to him

and I said, you know, there's not a day hardly that goes by that I don't think about you.

And when I think about you, I love children. I love babies

and my arms have longed for you. I've longed to hold you in my arms

and

I invited them

to be in my house.

I said I welcome you.

I want your spirits here with us. Join us in my home

Long story.

I also invited my dad's spirit to be with us in our home.

You see him walking around, don't be surprised.

So we did that.

Now the next day

and tell the rest of this and then I'm done.

The next day I'm babysitting my, my, my granddaughter, who was six months old at the time. And when she was born, by the time she was two weeks old, I knew there was something wrong with your, with her eyes. Babies normally focus on your eyes. She couldn't. She'd focus on your, she'd like look at you and she'd focus on your hairline.

Anyway, so

she has a lot of physical problems and learning disabilities and such. But this day, the next day, I'm babysitting for her and she and I are sitting in my sunroom and I'm rocking her.

See? My sponsor said to me,

She said those little spirits know what they're signed up for.

They know it's not their time and they said, OK,

I know I'm going to be around here just for a very short little bit. I agree to that and then off they go.

Wasn't there time?

And umm, so I'm rocking her. I'm rocking here in my arms

and I'm looking down at her and all of a sudden Kira focuses right into my eyes. Her eyes meet my eyes. And I will promise you this was a physical impossibility for that child. It was not physically possible for her to do that. But it happened, and our eyes locked

for easily a full minute.

I couldn't dismiss that.

See, I come from a belief. I have a belief. This is my belief, my belief

that it was not the time

when I aborted them,

but I believe that they were meant to come at another time. And I think she is one of those little spirits come back.

It's my belief. You don't have to believe, but I believe it.

This immense stuff for me

is powerful.

Powerful.

All I have to do is be willing

and have faith

God's gonna get me through the amends and give me what I need to be able to make it. Because you see, I don't have the power to even do that.

I don't have the power to make amends.

I don't have it in me. I want to run and hide and pretend I didn't hurt you.

And they're

amends are the hardest things I've ever had to do in this program.

They're also the most free.

My name's Tom. I'm an alcoholic.

I'll just tell you one little deal and then maybe I know we should take a break.

I think that we've all had things happen to us, spiritual things happen to us

that are, they're really extraordinary and, and are really special.

And I used to, I tell Don certain stories, certain things that had happened to me

in sobriety and sometimes, you know, before sobriety, but especially in sobriety when I was tuned into it.

And I'd say, you know, Don, is this something like when I speak from the podium, should I be telling this? And a lot of times he'd say, no, that's not one you tell from the podium

because you'll water it down. It'll lose its its energy, it'll lose its power. That's a one-on-one story. You share that with people one-on-one. I listen to him

and she she didn't tell you kind of the rest of that story after Vicente died. What happened that night? And I don't know what Don. I was just thinking this. I don't know if Don would say no, you share that one-on-one or not. But I'm just I moved to share it. It's quirky as hell, but

you know, my father-in-law Vicente was really old school. He was. He was younger than

by about a year than my dad would have been. My dad died in 73, when he was 48. He died here in Manhattan. He was

a hard working alcoholic. That's what he was. And

but Vicente was a year younger than what my father would have been, but he was more the way he was raised and in the time and place he was raised, he was more like my grandparents. It was more like he'd been born in the late 1800s. And because that's just where they were from, that's how it was in world northern New Mexico.

And

he denied himself a lot of stuff. I think he he just did. He just didn't think, I don't know if he thought he was not worth it or whatever, but he just, you know, he was raised dirt poor and you just didn't ask for much, you know, you just settled for, for. And so

it turned out we found out once he got sick with cancer that he he he really liked Johnny Cash a lot, you know, and

he never owned a CD player. He owned a radio, but he never owned a CD player. He would have never thought to have gotten himself one. You know, he just and our daughter Nieves got him a got him ACD player. Well, we all did. We got him ACD player. We were trying to, you know, keep him involved in in life. We got him AVCR, never had one of those, you know, and but anyway, we got him

ACD player and you ever spot him

records that she thought he would like and bought him a bunch of Johnny Cash, like 3 Johnny Cash records.

And he would listen to him, you know, when he was sick and when we brought Hospice in, there was a Hospice nurse named Francis who just fell in love with Vicente, like everybody did. And you know, she told us that a lot of her patients weren't very lovable, but that he really was. And he really was. He was a lovable guy.

And so she'd joke with him and talk and she, it turned out she liked Johnny Cash a lot too. And like country, country music, you know,

and so she, you know, talked with him and about different things. And anyway, the night he died, I was, we live, I always say, one alfalfa field away from my in laws and wanting to call me when he died and I came over, I've been at our house and she'd been there in the room with him. And I think I told you that I don't know what we've said so much this weekend. I can't remember what the hell I've said, but

maybe repeating myself. But anyway, we we washed his body and we prayed with his body for about 45 minutes or an hour and which we think is the right thing to do. It's just something that

it's no religion taught us that we just that's just what we learned to do. We did it with my mom 2 1/2 years ago. I

and we had to call Francis, the the Hospice nurse and she came and she did the death certificate piece and she did all this when she walked into the into the room,

she bent over and she kissed Vicente. He was dead. And she kissed him on the cheek and she said, say hi to Johnny Cash.

And we thought that was really sweet. And she stayed with us for quite a while, like 2 1/2 hours and talked with all of us. Turned out she and I had worked in a treatment center 18 years prior together, didn't even know each other, you know, And sweet gal. And she, she just expressed how much she cared for him. She hugged us all when she left. And that was about 5:00 in the morning when she took off

and and she left and, and she had said, you know,

that Ring of Fire was, was his favorite song. You know, that's what he really liked. And but he liked all of Johnny Cash. So she left and, you know, it's kind of peaceful. We were just all kind of hanging out. His sister had come by then. We sent the sister, Juanita's aunt and mom was there And and my son-in-law we were all there and

Francis had left. And 5 minutes after she left the phone rings and Yves goes and and answers the phone

and she comes back shaking her head and she said Francis got in her car to drive home. She turned on the radio and Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash was playing.

I don't know.

I don't know. Who knows, You know, but

I work with, with a lot of guys and you know, what we try to do is keep ourselves open to all possibilities. You know,

you know, I've talked about this weekend, you can really short change yourself in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's, there's worlds upon worlds here that are open to us. And we, I think we tend to, to diss the power of God and we, we short change ourselves, you know, by, by not being awake to this stuff. But I think stuff like that is happening all the time

and, and I think, you know, you become sensitive to it. And then Mickey Musset used to say you, you're walking in Miracle Land. You can walk in Miracle Land and you can't, you know, and let's, let's take a break for 10 minutes and, and then we'll be back.

How do you follow that up?